Candy-floss
by viewingtheinfinite
Summary: Waiting between intervals can get boring. {Lutecest}


Pointless fluff!

* * *

The fair was inexplicably boring and bland; everything felt overused and terribly tacky, annoyingly cheery music on what seemed to be its third loop that interval. Every stand, game and cripplingly racist performance was nothing more than deja-vu now, irritatingly stark deja-vu on a loop just like the cheery music.

It was their 123rd try.

The twins could not be bothered to count the tallies on the chalkboard anymore. Another Booker had came and failed in his mission, another dull mark on the board. Waiting for a reboot of the man to appear took a lot of patience, something that both Robert and Rosalind had a lot of, but it did tend to wear extremely thin after a time.

So, although they were chagrined by seeing the same sights and sounds for the 123rd round in such a short time, they tried to have fun at the fair. It was a fair after all, despite its subliminal messages that boosted the supremacist views of the city, and they needed something-if anything-to dampen the gloomy atmosphere hanging around them, that they had not found a single Booker yet that had set things right.

Rosalind managed to win on every shoot-out stand, Robert with the vigour games. Robert juggled for a short while in an effort to impress his counterpart, her just nodding in approval while he went on. They both watched the Duke and Dimwit show put on for the children and found it hard to sit through, aware of the embedded messages, concerned for the younger audience members chortling and soaking it all up like a sponge, but omnipresent and stoic as usual.

The children even invited Rosalind to play hopscotch with them afterwards, and though she felt like a fool at first, she joined in anyway and discovered it was remarkably hard to jump around in a tight, long skirt, so she gave up half-way through and just watched them play by themselves, singing about the Songbird, which she thought was nothing but intriguing.

Robert had been invited too of course, but he had since shrunk off and got himself lost somewhere within the fair. Rosalind eventually left the kids and moved all the way over to the bench under her statue, the one that kept changing periodically into a statue of her brother due to the tear attached to it, and just patiently sat, waiting for the latter's return.

He seemed to be gone for ages, but when he did return, he wasn't empty-handed. Robert had a prominent smirk cast on his face as he sat down next to his counterpart, her scrutinising him with an eyebrow raised when she looked him over for the second time, making sure she wasn't seeing things.

"Candy-floss," she stated as he leant forward a little with the bouquet of floss in his larger hand. "Really, Robert? I think it was established when we passed away that there is no need to eat to sustain ourselves."

"It was free today," he replied, his smirk morphing into a taut frown as he regarded the confectionary somewhat thoughtfully. "We can still digest matter. I've only had this once."

"It's free everyday, I know but it's pointless, and yes, I've only had it once as well," she echoed him, and in exact unison they said, "At Emily's birthday party."

Funny how one of their childhood friends had remained the same gender in both universes. Robert straightened in his seat aside her and pulled at a tuft of the floss gingerly, examining it like it was an atom. "An interesting type of candy, don't you think?"

Rosalind eyed him. "If I recall correctly, Emily became too attached to the sweet and-"

"-got half of it stuck in her hair, I know," he finished for her, sighing and remembering himself. Fond childhood memories that would always linger... But then they always remembered too that they had not grown up with each other, but alone and lonely, and the fondness seemed to immediately dissipate. "But it simply isn't practical. I shan't ever get Emily's mother chopping a third of her hair off out of my mind."

"I don't think you are supposed to examine it, Robert," his sister commented with the ghost of a smirk on her face, amused by his over-analysation. "You're supposed to eat it. It isn't a particle, it's simply a sweet. Impractical, yes, but irrelevant."

"Well, look at you being the laid-back one," Robert smirked once more as her face instantly became stoic again. "This is a sight to see."

"It's not going to get stuck in your perfectly coiffed hair, dearest," she retorted, her wit nothing short of sarcastic. Whilst he tried to think of a comment to match hers, Rosalind leant forward and snatched a tuft from the cone, holding it out to him like an impatient mother with a fussy child, "Just have some."

Her twin ate it out of her hand then reclined back, glancing up to the sky briefly as if he had made a scientific breakthrough. "Interesting," he said, thoughtful again.

"The candy-floss?" Rosalind remarked, nibbling at some tufts herself, shuffling closer to him. She was glad she wore her usually flowing hair up, reminiscing on that poor little girl with wet floss tangled in her otherwise lovely locks and deciding that she did not want to endure the same experience.

"It melts straightaway," Robert started, "and it's very sweet." She held some more up and he ate that too.

"And what was your hypothesis?" his other self asked, half-interested.

"I thought it would be much sweeter," he concluded, rubbing his chin in a somehow exaggerated manner. "Much sweeter than that..."

"Compared to...?"

"Compared to?"

"Do you have secondary evidence to compare your brilliant findings to?" Rosalind drawled, practised in the art of experimentation, though with tests of science, not of candy-floss.

Robert robert smirked to himself, handing the cone to her. "Oh, yes. I do actually."

She eyed him again. "How many confectionary stands did you try while I was playing with the children?"

He shook his head, the smirk huge on his face. "Only one. And I'd like to retry it."

Rosalind went to ask what he was actually talking about, but was intercepted when Robert promptly kissed her. She didn't refuse him. He tasted like candy-floss, and she suspected that she tasted like it too, but when they parted and her twin pulled back, he had his "breakthrough face" on again.

"Ah," he nodded to himself, "just as I predicted."

She tilted her head, the floss loose in her hands. "What?"

He kissed her a second time. Then when they parted once more, he placed his mouth gently to her ear.

"You're much sweeter, dear."


End file.
